In the Flesh

by Portia Da Costa

  “Beatrice, a virgin?” he repeated, fixing on the here and now, his lifeline.

  “Yes, I believe she’s telling the truth,” said Sofia Chamfleur quietly, “unlikely as it seems, given the photographs. But after the story she told me, it seems to be the case.”

  Ritchie wanted a brandy. He wanted to rush out into the garden and walk round and round, turning Sofia’s revelation over in his head until he could make sense of how he felt about it. But instead, he reached for the cup of tea she’d just poured for him and sipped it.

  He’d arrived at his London home to find a note from Sofia, sent round by hand in answer to his wire; then climbed straight back into his carriage to Hampstead because he simply couldn’t wait any longer to see Beatrice.

  And now this. His new mistress was virgin. Which was both problematical and in his deepest, most atavistic male soul, a joy too.

  He sipped the tea, not tasting it, staring at the cup as if it were a dug-up object, the product of a long-dead civilization. Sofia waited silently, and he sensed she was aware of his layered dilemma.

  “Maybe I should just give her the money and leave her as she is? That way she’s marriageable again, at least from the financial point of view.” He put the cup down with a clatter on the side table, and almost smiled at the way Sofia didn’t even flinch for her beautiful china. “I’m sure some decent enough fellow could be persuaded to set aside his scruples in respect of the nude photographs and marry her. As a country wife, at least.”

  “You must have already become fond of her to even consider that, Edmund.”

  Had he? He tried to consult his heart, but it was a battered organ, much out of use lately. Sticking to the satisfaction of his baser parts caused much less pain.

  “I do like her. I like her very much.” Within his bruised heart, a little seed started to unfurl and in his mind, he pictured a boot, stomping down on it. “But we both know that it can’t go further than the bedroom. Not really.”

  Sofia, usually so wise, showed perplexity in her handsome face. “I don’t know what to say to you, Edmund, or what to suggest.” Her fingers pleated the sash of her day gown. “Except perhaps, to talk to her. See how she feels. I do believe that she’s already conceived a great fondness for you too, and a desire.” She gave him a very level glance. “I sense that Beatrice accepts that nobody expects her to be a virgin now, so she might as well sample the pleasures of the flesh with an experienced man she finds extremely attractive.”

  Ritchie smiled at his friend. “You make it sound simple, Sofia.”

  “I know it isn’t, Edmund. But after what you’ve been through, perhaps you should be kind to yourself, and to Beatrice?” She shrugged, a fond look in her eyes. “I know not everyone is as lucky in life as I am, in finding Ambrose when I did, and then being in a position to do something about it.”

  A position to do something about it.

  Despite its firm squashing, the little shoot fought to unfurl again and Ritchie reached for his tea, wishing for whiskey to calm the maelstrom of his dangerous emotions. To distract himself, he turned his mind to other matters. Ones that he knew he could do something about.

  “This enterprising photographer… Has Beatrice revealed his identity to you?”

  “I’m not sure. She wouldn’t name him. She simply said he was a sweetheart.”

  Sofia reached for the teapot, ready to recharge their cups. “She doesn’t seem like the sort of young woman to pose in the buff for just anybody, so my money’s on Eustace Lloyd. He was paying court to her not all that long ago…and, well, I’m not sure I like that young man very much. Too much false charm, as if he’s hiding a less-than-honest nature.”

  “I agree.” Ritchie stared into his teacup, imagining the bitter brew of retribution rather than the delicate Indian infusion. “On all counts. Lloyd is an unsavory character. He projects a veneer of amiability, and perhaps sensitivity toward women, but he’s a bad lot. Beatrice will say nothing of the circumstances of those photographs, but I suspect their revelation was not of her doing.”

  “Yes! Yes!” Sofia Chamfleur leaned forward, her expression earnest. “That’s my belief too. That she was tricked somehow, either coerced or cajoled, I don’t know which. And now, she’s both too proud to admit her lapse of judgment, and yet too decent to lay blame where it’s due.”

  “I believe you’re right, Sofia. And I plan to find out for certain. This creature can’t be allowed to take advantage of Beatrice’s sweet, adventurous nature, and simply get away with it.”

  Sofia laid her hand on his arm, a brief touch. “You won’t badger her about him, though, will you? If she doesn’t wish to talk about it, it’ll do no good to insist on the details.”

  Ritchie smiled. “Of course not. The last thing I want to do is cause her distress. She puts on a brave act, but I sense she’s had her share of grief.”

  Eyes narrowed, deep in thought, Ritchie sipped his tea yet barely tasted it as the two of them lapsed for a moment into silence. With the resources at his disposal it would an easy matter to reveal the true provenance of the photographs. And when he did confirm his suspicions, he’d make that damned swine Lloyd’s life a perfect misery.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  After the Show

  BEATRICE HAD WATCHED for a while, then whirled away from the spy hole, too excited to watch any more of Arabella’s antics with her handsome young man. Her brain was like a galloper, images circling and circling around while her body simmered.

  If only I could go back. Back to before all this happened and I knew nothing. Being an ignorant girl was so much easier.

  But she hadn’t been that girl for many a year. Her constitution was innately sensual and she’d be the first to admit to it. She’d enjoyed heated kisses with Tommy and strangely innocent explorations that would have flowered into the fulfillment of mutual pleasure if his life hadn’t been cut short so cruelly. She’d even been drawn to Eustace, against her better judgment, because marriage offered an outlet for her natural inclinations and needs.

  And now there was Ritchie. Perhaps the pinnacle of a long climb toward something she’d always yearned for, despite the stark transactional facts of his indecent proposal.

  The little ormolu clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour. How many had passed since she’d arrived here? Barely sixty minutes or so, yet it seemed an eternity. She’d attempted to cool herself down with a splash of water in the very modern bathroom adjoining, but maybe she should dress now, and go down and find Sofia? The heated cries next door were done now. The room might be empty, or the lovers might be embracing, quiet and tender, their frolic over.

  Beatrice’s corset lay over the back of an armchair. Could she lace without Polly, or should she ring for the maid whose assistance Sofia had offered? She’d managed it on her own before, after a fashion. It had been a necessity, that time behind the dressing screen in Eustace’s makeshift studio, even though her lingering drowsiness had meant she’d ended up much like a badly tied bundle of washing rather than a well-corseted young lady.

  But now, just as she was about to start grappling with the laces, a sharp knock came at the door, making her jump. A familiar voice followed. “Beatrice? Can I come in?”

  The corset slipped through her fingers and fell a tangle on the floor at her feet. She’d wondered earlier, but seriously, how could he really be here? Had her fevered imagination conjured him up?

  Whirling around to grab her robe from the bed, she caught her foot in the lacing and tumbled to the carpet to join the corset, shouting “Ouch!” instead of “Wait a moment!” as she’d intended.

  Like some fierce, defending angel, Ritchie burst into the room and strode over to her.

  “Beatrice! Are you injured? I heard you cry out.”

  He was clad for business, in dark, sober gray, with perfe
ct neck linen and a quiet diamond stickpin. He looked utterly splendid to her eyes. How she’d missed him.

  Don’t be absurd, Bea. He’s barely been gone a couple of days!

  “Beatrice, are you all right?” Concern filled Ritchie’s blue eyes, and he crouched down, frowning. Beatrice wanted to shake herself. She was goggling like a maid adoring a prince.

  “I’m perfectly well, thank you, Ritchie.” Impatient, she thrust away the corset and sprang to her feet. Rather too fast it seemed. Her head spun and she swayed again, hands flying out.

  Even swifter than she, Ritchie stood up too, slinging a strong, immaculately suited arm around her waist.

  “Clearly you are,” he replied as she tried to wriggle away, and taking no nonsense, he manhandled her over to the bed, his demeanor half stern, half tender as he set her down to sit on its edge.

  “What on earth were you doing rolling around on the floor?” Looming over her, he put out a hand and smoothed red strands of her hair back from her face. Her coiffure was collapsing, but he seemed not to notice, his eyes on hers, searching, worried. Beatrice was impressed that he continued to study her features for signs of faintness or enervation, despite the fact she was still wearing only drawers and chemise

  “It’s nothing. Thank you. Just a trip… I got tangled up in the laces of my corset when I heard your voice.” It sounded farcical. It was farcical. She couldn’t help but grin at him, and as if accepting her explanation, he grinned back at her, as handsome as the sun.

  Oh Ritchie, I can see how society belles fall at your feet so easily.

  “Well, Bea, usually I have the cream of society womanhood falling over themselves to get out of their corsets when I’m around. You’re the first beauty who’s gone arse over tit trying to get into hers.”

  Curses, it was as if he’d read her mind again. She could swear the wretched man was a mentalist.

  “I’m not a society beauty. I’m just your courtesan, and I was about to dress anyway.” His hand lingered at her face, and the compulsion to turn and press her cheek into his palm was almost unbearable.

  “You’re not ‘just’ anything, Bea.” Sitting alongside her, he turned his hand and ran the backs of his fingers down over her cheek, her neck, her shoulder and her arm until he reached her hand. “You’re a special and unusual woman, believe me.” With a flick of his wrist, he took her hand and held it lightly.

  How could such a slight caress have such an intense effect on her? She was trembling already, and she was sure he could feel it. Why on earth did she give herself away so easily?

  “You’re a flatterer, Ritchie,” she replied lightly, giving him what she hoped was a nonchalant smile. He was the very thing she’d been wanting since the moment he’d left South Mulberry Street to depart on his business trip, but it wouldn’t do to appear so obviously besotted. “But it’s very pleasant to be flattered, so I’ll accept it.”

  “Good,” he murmured, then leaned over to kiss the inside of her elbow, the move so unexpected and so sensual it almost shattered her composure. Once again, that devilish exploratory tongue of his swept over her naked skin. Once again, it felt as if he were licking her between her legs. Something she’d recently seen Arabella’s exotic swain do.

  But how was Ritchie here so soon and so unexpectedly?

  “I thought you were due to be in Yorkshire on business for some days to come.” Her voice wavered as he began to suck the tender flesh in the crook of her elbow, like some predatory beast assaying her flavor. “I…I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”

  “Business went well. And I couldn’t stay away any longer.” His words were muffled against her skin. “I sent wires to both here and Mulberry Street on my arrival, and Sofia replied with a note to say you were here.”

  When he straightened up, Ritchie searched her face, his own slightly smiling and mysterious, as if reading her again, then his gaze dropped to the small pearl buttons down the front of her chemise, and the delicate ribbons.

  “We’ve been shopping. Spending some of your money, as you suggested.” His gaze felt as hot as limelight, warming the slopes of her breasts and her nipples through the muslin. “Then we came back here and Sofia suggested an afternoon rest.”

  Ritchie’s mouth quirked with amusement, and his eyes flickered around, moving from her, to the peephole—with which he was obviously acquainted—and back to the bed where sat the open intaglio-work box and its contents, still strewn about.

  Beatrice’s face flamed. If it wasn’t bad enough being found sprawled on the floor in her frillies, now she’d been revealed in her secret examination of Sofia’s erotic playthings.

  “Rest, eh?” His long, dark eyelashes flashed provocatively. “I should have known what sort of entertainment Sofia had in mind for you.”

  “I find such items to be interesting curiosities…but I’m not completely ignorant of their purposes.” She reached for the godemiche, intending to return it and its friends to the box and slam the lid. Yet somehow her fingers lingered over the smooth, evocative surface and, as if governed by some infernal clockwork device beyond her control, her glance tilted downward toward Ritchie’s genital area, so respectably covered by charcoal-gray fine worsted.

  She looked. And she knew he was looking at her looking. But still she couldn’t stop, and her fingers curved instinctively around the phallus.

  When Ritchie laughed, she flung it away across the bed.

  “Don’t you care for your toy?” Still grinning, he retrieved it, his fingers curling around it just as thoughtfully as hers had done. “It seems quite a fine example of its kind to me.”

  Beatrice’s heart thudded in time to the pulsing of blood in her veins and in between her legs. The phallus was a fine example, and it was easy to imagine it real, Ritchie’s own flesh. Did he handle himself the way he handled the toy? Slowly, sensuously, and with lavish, loving care.

  “Yes, I must admit it’s well made,” she said. How strange and feathery her own voice sounded.

  Ritchie continued to fondle the cylinder of ivory, his tapered fingertips coasting over the faux veins, the thoughtfully fashioned head. Beatrice’s eyes skittered from his hands to his face and back again, and from the way his long lashes fluttered once more, he might as well have been stroking his own cock. When he let out a faint breath, she glanced downward. She couldn’t stop herself.

  Good Lord, he was aroused, and sporting an enormous stand beneath his sublimely tailored trousers.

  “So how do you think it compares to the real thing, Bea?” His voice was urbane, but his midnight-blue eyes were dark, hard and burning. “They call these a widow’s comforter, but I’d imagine they’re just as much a consolation to unmarried women.”

  “I—”

  Have a care, Beatrice. He doesn’t expect that you’re a virgin. He imagines you at least modestly experienced.

  “Well, I haven’t had time to assess the efficacy of this particular example.”

  And still he stroked the carefully fashioned replica with all the relish he might apply to the real thing. Or have her apply. But who knew with a perverse man like Ritchie? He might derive a strange enjoyment out of touching the facsimile.

  “Perhaps we could do that now? Assess it’s efficacy, I mean.” His eyes held hers, even though she was still peripherally aware of his fingers, moving, moving.

  Beatrice felt enormously hot and agitated, unsure of herself, yet at the same time more sure of this than anything ever in her life before. It was a singular state, clear, yet bordering on madness.

  “We could, I suppose.” She glanced at the godemiche, and at Ritchie’s thumb pressed into the groove beneath its smooth ivory head. “But wouldn’t you prefer to…well…just have me? It is what you’ve paid so handsomely for, after all.”

  For her own part, Beatrice wanted anythi
ng that involved Ritchie’s hands, his mouth or his living phallus.

  And oh, his naked body…would she see him unclothed at last? Surely he was just as beautiful, if not more by far than Yuri beyond the peephole.

  Indeed, I am going quite barking mad.

  But her state didn’t alarm her. She felt only excited, as if soaring toward a long-sought goal.

  “All in good time, Bea. All in good time.”

  He seemed to be juggling with the godemiche now, holding the wicked thing between his two thumbs and forefingers and slowly turning it. She half expected him to produce his pocket handkerchief, envelop the faux penis in it, then make it disappear with a cry of “Abracadabra!”

  Beatrice eyed him with impatience. What was his game? The man had spent a fortune getting her, and now that he’d got her, he seemed in no hurry to cash in his investment.

  Despite his enormous arousal.

  “But you want me, surely?” She flipped a pointed glance at the evidence. “Even I can tell that.”

  It was Ritchie’s turn to narrow his eyes. Slowly, he assessed her, while still engaged in his prestidigitation with the ivory phallus. “Even you? Why would you say that, Bea? The notorious Siren of South Mulberry Street should be thoroughly experienced in the various nuances of male desire.”

  He does know. I’ll wager he does…and if it’s not mind reading, it’s Sofia. I could box her ears!

  “Well, even the most experienced of courtesans refrain from ogling men in public, so familiarity with their parts is usually confined to the bedchamber…I’d say.” She gave him a firm look, wishing she could quell questions and manipulate conversations as easily as he seemed to be able to. “And as I’ve yet to view you naked, Ritchie, that remains to be seen.”

  Stop babbling, Beatrice!

  His beautiful lips quirked, and she imagined him notching a point reluctantly to her. He opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to hesitate again, and she almost imagined him repeating “All in good time…”